Chapter 18: Chapter 18

“Where are we going exactly, Jake?”

Myra’s eyes filled with enthusiasm as she repeatedly told herself in her mind; You can do this, Myra. You need to.

She knew now Jake was driving them somewhere linked to her father’s disappearance. She hadn’t the heart to ask, after how she had almost let him have her in the cafe toilet earlier.

All this while, she was supposed to be Hatta Baderan’s girl. Now, just sitting in his luxury car made her uneasy, especially with the effect he had on her. She knew she might cave in to her desires soon.

What was she even thinking? Her wet undies had dried off by now, but she was still feeling guilty. She didn’t want to think of all the possibilities that would have happened inside a public toilet earlier had Jake not held back. While she knew it was wrong, she couldn’t help herself.

It turned out she still carried a torch for Jake after being in a relationship for so long with Hart.

“Uh, Myra?”

Jake halted the car in a multi-storey car park. On the first glance, she knew they were in some office, but it wasn’t Jake’s company office. The venue looked fishy.

He turned off the engine and stared at her. Myra paused, biting her lip as she normally did when she was nervous or unsure. His hand moved to place itself on her shoulder. They were in such proximity that she hadn’t realised it. Her heart raced when she returned his gaze. Those dark eyes, filled with despair and remorse, were more than she could handle.

“I’ve wanted to tell you this for a very long time, Myra,” he said, drawing her closer to him. Their eyes were a mere inch from each other.

“Jake?” her teeth chattered. “If it’s about what happened in Bali, I forgive you. If you really like her, then go for it. I can understand.”

“No, Myra. You don’t. If not for my slight mistake in the past, she wouldn’t have been at the hotel. Myra, please. Give me another chance.”

He lifted his collar slightly. He had tattooed two letters, together making the initials JM, right on his shoulder along with the numbers “1314”. Even a fool knew what it meant. He wanted to be with her for a lifetime.

But why did he hurt her first?

“I know you still have me in your heart, Myra,” he said. “In the washroom earlier, you were returning my kisses. You let me do what I wanted to you, Myra. And last night…”

“Last night, what happened?”

Jake released his hold on Myra. He didn’t want to speak more about ‘last night’, which just made her curious and suspect him further. Neither did he want to tell her about how it had been a drunken mistake, and they had both lost their senses while heavily intoxicated.

“Last night, I wanted to come over to see you but Sierra said you were asleep.”

It was a lie. It had been him all along who sent her home, opened the door with her keys and put her in bed, ensuring that she was fast asleep before he left. Fortunately, Sierra and her boyfriend had left minutes before he arrived, and he had stayed for an hour and a half before he went home.

“Oh.” She leaned back and played with a strand of her hair. “Jake, what do you think happened to my father?”

“Be mentally ready for all this. He might never speak ever again or he may even be in a wheelchair all his life. Of course, that is just the worst-case scenario. He is still recuperating in Sydney. But apart from having an issue with Mae and the stress from his personal issues, I cannot deduce everything that has happened. It’s only likely that we may find something out of the office upstairs. It’s the main office of a stock trading company.”

“Stock trading? But my father stopped dabbling in those a few years ago -” she paused and gasped for some fresh air.

“Let’s go down and find out, Myra.” He firmly pronounced. She nodded and hit the button on her seat belt to relieve herself from her bonds, getting out of the car. It was a highly secured facility, and they had to produce their identification cards before security allowed them entry. The elevator dashed up a hundred floors before she snapped out of her trance.

Her feet were shaking. She commanded herself to calm down before following him out of the elevator. Jake nonchalantly turned the doorknob and opened the door to the office of the stock trading company.

The company was empty. Only a paper folder lay on the table, with Alfred’s name on it. Myra flipped each paper inside it for a lot of times before she put down the folder.

Whatever Jake told her was true. Alfred had indeed invested a lot of money inside his stock trading company. Half a million was not a small amount. Counting from the date he had first started investing, it dismayed her to come to know that it was three months from the date he had proclaimed that he would give up stock trading for his beloved family.

“He was addicted, Myra. All this time, he avoided my father’s truthful advice and fell into a bottomless pit of regret.

“That means-- the trip, wherever it was to, it was,” Myra stammered, unable to find the answer in her mind. She didn’t know whether to believe her instinct.

“He was running from reality, but it was when the shares he had bought collapsed for good, which was when he couldn’t take it anymore. He made a few calls to my father, but when my father got to Sydney, it was much too late.”

“When did this happen?” Myra faced Jake tearily.

“While you were in Bali,” Jake said solemnly. It made her feel guiltier that while she was enjoying the time of her life away from her father’s control and satisfying her needs with Hart, her father was suffering. It hurt her more than the fact she had possibly cheated on Hart while she was drunk. Despite finding her father overcontrolling, she knew, in her heart, how much more important her father was than Hart. Between Hart and her father, she would definitely have chosen her father.

“I got the message from my father and returned at once. But there was nothing we could do - it already riddled his hotels with debt. The failed stock investment put him on the verge of bankruptcy. And with a stroke, he might not be mentally capable of running his hotels.”

“What?” She couldn’t believe her father ruined the hotel business her grandfather had strived for decades to build with his own hands. She refused to believe it was true, but at this moment of knowing everything, what could she even do?

She had to think of a solution, quick.

……………………………………………………………………

Meanwhile, Hart had received an urgent call to return to his uncle’s company. There was a lot on his mind that he was unsure of. First, he did not know the strength and capability of his adversary until today. Second, it disturbed him that despite how Myra had told him in Bali that she desperately wanted to forget him. How she reacted with him today contradicted what she told him about Jake.

It was all so complicated, wasn’t it? It threatened him because Myra might return to Jake any time. After all, he was her first love, and they had grown up together! On top of it, how could he, an executive, contend with a CEO? Jake was much younger and closer in age than him.

He remembered how the students at the university earlier stared at him. It turned out that his relationship with Myra wasn’t as conventional as he expected. In Indonesia, people widely accepted age gaps in relationships. This didn’t seem the case with Myra, probably because she was the one wealthy, making it look like he was the one relying on her?

In all aspects, he appeared to have lost the war with Jake Yu. He sighed, manoeuvring the vehicle slowly through the heavy traffic. His slender fingers tapped impatiently on the stereo, adjusting the frequency until he heard a channel in his native language.

Music blasted from the speakers on both sides, but it was not calming at all. The car came close to a zebra crossing, where vehicles had to give way to pedestrians. He stopped, as a serious-looking young woman in a business suit carrying a briefcase scurried across the road.

Suddenly, the woman turned and dealt him the most endearing smile he had ever witnessed. He felt a sensation as if his soul left his body momentarily and returned abruptly.

Minutes after that, the street blazed with horns from the other drivers, sending Hart on his way once again. Though the pedestrian had left, it raised this doubt in his mind.

That smile, those plump lips and pinkish cheeks…. He clearly remembered deep in his mind.

Because the owner of that face was someone he knew.

Milla. Hadn’t the police confirmed her death? Was he dreaming, or had he missed her so much that he saw her soul?